[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

to the long French mirror which was in the breakfast room. "See now!" said
Mr. Sheridan. "You, who endanger life and fame in order to provide a
mendicant with gruel, tracts and blankets! You, who deny a sop to the one
hunger which is vital!
Oh, madam, I am tempted glibly to compare your eyes to sapphires, and your
hair to thinspun gold, and the color of your flesh to the arbutusflowerfor
that, as you can see, would be within the truth, and it would
The Certain Hour
PRO HONORIA
70
please most women, and afterward they would not be so obdurate. But you are
not like other women," Mr.
Sheridan observed, with admirable dexterity. "And I aspire to you, the
irresistible Ogle! you, who so greatheartedly befriend the beggar! you, who
with such industry contrive alleviation for the discomforts of poverty. Eh,
eh! what will you grant to any beggar such as I? Will you deny a sop to the
one hunger which is vital?" He spoke with unaccustomed vigor, even in a
sort of terror, because he knew that he was speaking with sincerity.
"To the one hunger which is vital!" he repeated. "Ah, where lies the secret
Page 74
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
which makes one face the dearest in the world, and entrusts to one little
hand a life's happiness as a plaything? All Aristotle's learning could not
unriddle the mystery, and Samson's thews were impotent to break that spell.
Love vanquishes all. . . . You would remind me of some previous
skirmishings with Venus's unconquerable brat? Nay, madam, to the contrary,
the fact that I have loved many other women is my strongest plea for
toleration. Were there nothing else, it is indisputable we perform all
actions better for having rehearsed them. No, we do not of necessity
perform them the more thoughtlessly as well; for, indeed, I find that with
experience a man becomes increasingly difficult to please in affairs of the
heart. The woman one loves then is granted that preeminence not merely by
virtue of having outshone any particular one of her predecessors; oh, no!
instead, her qualities have been compared with all the charms of all her
fair forerunners, and they have endured that stringent testing. The winning
of an oftenbartered heart is in reality the only conquest which entitles a
woman to complacency, for she has received a real compliment; whereas to be
selected as the target of a lad's first declaration is a tribute of no more
value than a man's opinion upon vintages who has never tasted wine."
He took a turn about the breakfast room, then came near to her. "I love you.
Were there any way to parade the circumstance and bedeck it with pleasing
adornments of filed phrases, tropes and farfetched similes, I would not
grudge you a deal of verbal pageantry. But three words say all. I love you.
There is no act in my past life but appears trivial and strange to me, and
to the man who performed it I seem no more akin than to Mark
Antony or Nebuchadnezzar. I love you. The skies are bluer since you came,
the beauty of this world we live in oppresses me with a fearful joy, and in
my heart there is always the thought of you and such yearning as I
may not word. For I love you."
"Youbut you have frightened me." Miss Ogle did not seem so terrified as to
make any effort to recede from him; and yet he saw that she was frightened
in sober earnest. Her face showed pale, and soft, and glad, and awed, and
desirable above all things; and it remained so near him as to engender
riotous aspirations.
"I love you," he said again. You would never have suspected this man could
speak, upon occasion, flu ently.
"I thinkI think that Heaven was prodigal when Heaven made you. To think of
you is as if I listened to an exalted music; and to be with you is to
understand that all imaginable sorrows are just the figments of a dream
which I had very long ago."
She laid one hand on each of his shoulders, facing him. "Do not let me be
too much afraid! I have not ever been afraid before. Oh, everything is in
a mist of gold, and I am afraid of you, and of the big universe which I
was born into, and I am helpless, and I would have nothing changed! Only, I
cannot believe I am worth
L10,000, and I do so want to be persuaded I am. It is a great pity," she
sighed, "that you who convicted
Warren Hastings of stealing such enormous wealth cannot be quite as eloquent
today as you were in the
Oudh speech, and convince me his arraigner has been equally rapacious!"
"I mean to prove as muchwith time," said Mr. Sheridan. His breathing was
yet perfunctory.
Miss Ogle murmured, "And how long would you require?"
"Why, I intend, with your permission, to devote the remainder of my
existence to the task. Eh, I concede that space too brief for any adequate
discussion of the topic; but I will try to be concise and very prac tical"
The Certain Hour
PRO HONORIA
71
Page 75
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
She laughed. They were content. "Try, then" Miss Ogle said.
She was able to get no farther in the sentence, for reasons which to
particularize would be indiscreet. A
PRINCESS OF GRUB STREET
"Thoughor, rather, becauseVANDERHOFFEN was a child of the French Revolution,
and inherited his social, political and religiousor, rather, anti
religiousviews from the French writers of the eighteenth century, England
was not ready for him and the unshackled individualism for which he at first
contended.
Recognizing this fact, he turned to an order of writing begotten of the
deepest popular needs and addressed to the best intelligence of the great
middle classes of the community."
A PRINCESS OF GRUB STREET
Now emperors bide their times' rebuff
I would not be a kingenough
Of woe it is to love;
The paths of power are steep and rough, And tempests reign above.
I would not climb the imperial throne;
'Tis built on ice which fortune's sun
Thaws in the height of noon.
Then farewell, kings, that squeak `Ha' done!'
To time's fullthroated tune.
PAUL VANDERHOFFEN. Emma and Caroline. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]